Today's reaction to the IGN "review in progress" is a great entry point for a much more important discussion about the impact Google has on editorial content.

A thread:

The income for most news websites see massive impact based on the number of readers they have.

This number can change over time, but is typically impacted by two things: the steady drip of regular readers and longtail old content and big stories that bring in spikes of traffic.

Those new monthly stories typically drive new traffic in two ways: By being first or by being unique.

Being unique requires finding an unusual take. So you can write somethig that angers readers or something that intelligently captures the zeitgeist of the moment. The second is much, much harder to do. That's why we see so much of the first.

The other way to create unique content is to do something that not everyone else is doing. So covering topics that don't have a proven track record. This is risky and requires not just faith, but a deep understanding of what does and doesn't make for interesting content.

The reason just about every site, and certainly the big sites, all seem to cover the same thing is because it's less risky, especially after you've grown to become massive. It's also not great journalism, but that's another thread.

That brings us to how sites that all cover the same thing compete to still garner traffic in a crowded field.

And that's all about SEO.

Search Engine Optimization means writing for Google's ever-changing algorithms. It means knowing how Google ranks and weighs what you write and when you write it.

The easiest, most stable way to game SEO is to be first. But there's a trick. You can't just create a URL and headline to hold your place in SEO line, you need content that backs up those two things.

That's where a-matter (that's background filler content) comes in. You write a story that is 90 percent background and has one or two fresh lines up top, slap on an SEO friendly headline, add a strong URL and you're first in line.

But there's an even better way!

The more content you include in your placeholder story, the stronger the SEO and if you can keep drawing people back to that same story you gain SEO strength and keep your place in line.

Hence stories that run with "breaking, updates to come" or previews that turn into reviews.

Ultimately, whether you think this is bad or good for readers comes down to the content itself and whether it is misleading.

But make no mistake, this is a decision powered entirely by an SEO play. Good or bad.

Finally, just to be 1000 percent clear. I don't think IGN is unusual in this practice. I also think that under @TinaAmini's leadership IGN has grown and improved in a lot of very significant ways.